Vital Wheat Gluten w/ Vitamin CProfessional bakers rely on Hodgson Mill Vital Wheat Gluten to give their yeast breads the highest rise, best shape and texture, and extended freshness. A small addition of this simple ingredient will vastly improve your home-baked bread and even increase the protein content.

While scoping out my local grocery store for the best flour to use in my dough, I noticed this. I'm not sure if it would help or not, but would this give a gluten/protein boost to my dough? Will it alter flavor?

Hi Natephish, It can be used to give a protien boost to a weker flour. For every 1% VWG added to the total weight of flour, you will increase the protien by approx 0.6%. At these small amounts i doubt you will detect any taste difference. The Hodgson Mill statement about textures will probably be the biggest difference. The VWG essentially helps creates a stronger gluten structure. Chiguy

For every 1% VWG added to the total weight of flour, you will increase the protien by approx 0.6%.

chiguy,

The Vital Wheat Gluten I'm familiar with is between 75% and 80% protein. Does it indicate something other than 75%-80% on that brand's box? Also, I assume you meant to say that the protein percentage will increase by 0.6, not increase the protein by 0.6%. An example of increasing the percentage:

Yes, you could go to a weaker flour and add vital wheat gluten to the flour to bring the total protein content up to where you want it to be. In this case you will need to determine the difference, in protein content, between the flour that you have and the protein content that you want to have. Let's say you have a 12.2% protein content flour and you want it to be 13.6%--this is a 1.4% difference. Divide the 1.4% by 0.6 to find the amount of vital wheat gluten that you will need to add to the flour to bring it up to 13.6% protein content. In this case that would be 2.333% vital wheat gluten will need to be added to the flour. Since you are using 50-pounds of flour the math will look like this on your calculator: 50 X 2.333 press the "%" key and read the answer in the display window (1.1665-pounds) or 1-pound 2.7-ounces (that's rounded off).

Some people avoid the math by just using 2-3% VWG by weight of flour or simply using the volume quantities noted on the VWG package (typically 1-2 t. per cup of flour). To prevent pilliing or clumping, the usual advice is to mix the VWG in with the flour, not the water. Also, one should add 1 1/2-2 times the weight of the VWG in additional water.

While scoping out my local grocery store for the best flour to use in my dough, I noticed this. I'm not sure if it would help or not, but would this give a gluten/protein boost to my dough? Will it alter flavor?

Beverly Collins, in her Secrets From Inside the Pizzeria ebook claims you can't just add gluten, "Adding gluten makes tough, unpalatable dough." She doesn't specifically back that up with any more info, though. I've added gluten in the distant past, and have found her claim to be correct, at least sometimes. But it didn't always happen, and I was never able to identify if it was my technique, quantity of gluten added, etc..

Flavor will be different than a dough made with high gluten flour, but not much because of the addition of the gluten. The high gluten flours folks are using are made from Spring Wheat , a different variety than the Winter Wheat used for "regular" flour.

That's a tough one to answer without doing a lot of testing. As you know from reading the Lehmann thread (and maybe others), Tom Lehmann himself routinely recommends that pizza operators, especially those living outside the U.S. where high-protein flours are not readily available, use vital wheat gluten to increase the protein content of the local flours. I tried for some time to adapt the basic Lehmann NY style dough formulation to all-purpose flour and it wasn't until I added vital wheat gluten and also dried dairy whey that I was able to come up with something that I felt comfortable with recommending to others. That combination came out of a trip to Mexico where the only flour I had available to me to work with was a Mexican version of all-purpose flour. I described that experience at Reply 204 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg15668.html#msg15668. How I leveraged off of that experience to come up with the improved results is described in reply 205 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg15669.html#msg15669.

Since you quoted Tom saying the same value ("0.6"), where does he get it from? Is it from multiplying the percentage of gluten with the percentage of protein (i.e. .75 x .80)? I didn't know we were talking about gluten here, just total protein as it is listed for various flours.

It appears Tom makes the same semantic/mathematical error with percentages. I'm sure he means the difference is 1.4, not 1.4%. In any case, the way I determine the amount to add is different because I want to know how much flour to use too. It's just as important to know as how much gluten to add. In other words, Xg flour w/ 12% protein + Yg VWG = 500g flour w/ 14%.

I think the easiest advice for adding VWG is to simply treat it as part of the flour. Working out how much water to add is just integrated into how much water to add in total.

I believe I have read just about everything Tom has ever written on PMQ.com and the PMQ Think Tank on the subject of vital wheat gluten and I do not believe he has ever said where he got the 0.6 figure. I'm sure I would have noted the reason if he ever gave it because I, too, wondered where that specific number came from. Maybe I will send him an email and ask him.

I agree that there is an issue of the amount of flour to use also. Tom often just recommends that operators use x% of an ingredient without specifying any other changes, or he assumes that the operators will know how to make those changes or they will just tweak the final dough anyway. He does occasionally suggest some of the significant changes when the percentages are large, as by replacing some of the total flour in a formulation with, say, 30% cornmeal. He usually doesn't do the same with small percentage changes. Even the producers of vital wheat gluten just recommend that users add a certain amount of their product to an existing flour. Maybe they feel that users will be confused by more detailed instructions, just as yeast producers and salt producers will sometimes recommend using fixed quantities of their products even though there are differences.

I may have figured out where the 0.6 comes from, but I still wonder if Tom knows, since he didn't explain that the resulting mass of the VWG is to be subtracted from the mass of the flour. I didn't catch it right away because 0.6 assumes that the protein percentage of VWG is 70%, not 75.2% (official USDA) or between 75% and 81% (common). Here's how it works using 0.6:

(Mfp2 - Mfp1) / 0.6 = MvwgMf2 = Mf1 - Mvwg

where Mfp1 is the mass of the starting flour protein, Mfp2 is the mass of the resulting flour protein, Mvwg is the mass of the VWG, Mf1 is the mass of the starting flour,and Mf2 is the mass of the resulting flour.

As you can see with the proof of "B", 0.6 is only an approximation, and it assumes 70% protein content in vital wheat gluten. I look forward to Tom's explanation of 0.6 if Peter asks him.

- red.november

EDIT: The approximative quality of the aforementioned constants (0.6 and 0.7) is not mutually exclusive. The 0.6 is most likely a part of a value-pair, and that value-pair as a whole is an approximation based on a common operation.

FYI, shortly after my last post I sent Tom Lehmann an email asking him about the origin of the 0.6 figure and also asking about the need to adjust the flour (as well as the formula water). I will post his reply if he answers my email.

For those who either don't want to be bothered by differential calculus or wouldn't know where to begin, I have a dirt simple tool I just put up on Uncle Salmon to help. Since this is such a simple mathematic operation, there is no graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, just feed the values through the URL. If there is enough demand for a GUI, I will build one. An example URL follows:

Mt is the total mass (e.g. bread flour mass + VWG mass)Pt is the total target constituent percentage (e.g. 14.2% protein - King Arthur Sir Lancelot)P1 is the percentage of the first substance's constituent (e.g. 12.7% protein - King Arthur Bread Flour)P2 is the percentage of the second substance's constituent (e.g. 75% protein - Vital Wheat Gluten)d is the decimal place precisionNote: Percentages are expressed in decimal form.

All the default values are in the example URL. If you want to leave a value out, exclude the entire expression (i.e. key variable, equal sign, value - e.g. "P2=0.75"). I left all the values open for flexibility, since someone might run across the need to formulate a flour based on a 00 and a high-gluten in order to bring the protein down to a bread flour level. This will also work for substances that aren't flour. You could use this to target a certain percentage of water in two substances. For instance, mix two semisolids that have different percentages of water so that you have the exact percentage of water you want.

pete & November, Not exactly sure where i read that +1VWG=+.6% protien, it was late when i answered the question. I was aware of the leamann discussion at PMQ but could not find it immediately to provide Natephish a link. Thanks Peter. If effectively a 70-71% protien content is being used to calculate the VWG then a +1% increase can add approx .6% to the total protien content?? 500Gr flour, 10%protien(50Gr.), +1%VWG=5gr @ 70%=(3.50gr), total protien 53.5=10.6% of 505gr. ?? If a am wrong than my apology to Natephish, and i leave it up to you math wizzards to figure it out. Chiguy

That is a really neat tool. Thank you for creating it. It took me a few moments to realize that the values can be changed in the URL itself and the answer shows up below the URL. I agree that if there is sufficient demand, a GUI version would be useful.

I checked the websites of three major brands of vital wheat gluten: Arrowhead Mills, Hogsdon Mills and Bob's Red Mill, and only Bob's Red Mill gave the 75% protein figure. I may do a little digging to get the corresponding values for the other two vital wheat gluten products.

The reason for the use of 0.6 was/is unknown, and the formula itself is ambiguous. I'm sure that's not your fault. I was initially just providing an example based on the assumption of 0.6 being a legitimate value, and the calculation being one of percentage change, not a difference change expressed as a percentage. Either way, it doesn't provide the answer to how much flour to use with the VWG in order to duplicate a recipe calling for a higher-protein flour. There's nothing wrong with approximations, but when substantially higher precision is only a few seconds away, I prefer the higher precision. On that note...

Peter,

If you find that there are various brands with very different protein levels, let me know and I will in fact build a GUI so that it would be easier to choose between the different brands. Like I mentioned before, 75.2% is what's listed in USDA's database. I would be surprised to see wild variations.

According to calorie-count.com, Hodgson Mill VWG is 66.6% protein. Reported at 12 gram increments, that percentage may not be perfectly accurate, but even still, it looks like 60% remains a mythical percentage. I'm going to go ahead and add Hodgson Mill to the list on the tool. If someone procures a different protein percentage, let me know.

An important point that eluded me, even though November mentioned it in an earlier post, is that the tool November devised can be used to create different flour blends using different flours with different protein contents. For example, I recall a member who had a dwindling supply of King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour (bought at high cost from KA) and wanted to dilute it by adding all-purpose flour to approximate bread flour. With November's tool, one can specify the protein percents for the two flours to be combined (e.g., King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour and King Arthur all-purpose flour), and the desired total amount (weight) of flour and its desired protein percent (e.g., the protein percent for King Arthur bread flour), and the tool will specify the quantities of the two flours needed to produce the targeted blend. In this example, the final blend may not be identical to bread flour, because of the different grains used to make the different flours, but it may be close enough for most purposes.

For those who may want to play around with an example or two using the tool, the stated protein contents of the the three flours mentioned above are 14.2% for the King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour, 11.7% for the King Arthur all-purpose flour, and 12.7% for the King Arthur bread flour. Of course, the tool will work for any brands of flours. And with different flours.

Thanks for indicating the protein content of KAAP flour. I couldn't remember what it was other than in the 11% range. I added it to the list.

- red.november

EDIT: Before the question is asked, you can use a lower percentage for substance "B" and a higher percentage for substance "A." "A" does not have to be lower for it to work, since it works on convergence. The target percentage does have to be between the two substances' percentages, otherwise you will receive an error.

Today, I received the following reply to my email to Tom Lehmann on the VWG matter:

Peter;VWG is 60% gluten forming protein, so for each 1% (based on flour weight) of gluten that you add you will increase the protein/gluten content of the flour by 0.6%. Hence, if you have 100-pounds of flour at 12% protein and you REPLACE 1% of that flour with 1% VWG the total protein/gluten content of the flour will now be 12.6%. If you were to replace 2% of the flour with 2% gluten, the new protein content would be 13.2%. The gluten added should replace an equal portion of flour, and then for each pound of gluten that you added, you will need to increase the water content by 1.5 to 2 pounds.Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor